Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.
Joseph MurrayRead
One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Planning and caution are essential in any complex task.
This quote emphasizes the importance of thorough preparation and careful execution in challenging situations, particularly in the medical field. It suggests that difficulty may be a result of insufficient planning and that one must approach any task with seriousness and awareness of its potential risks.
Themes
SurgeryPlanningCautionRiskPreparation
In practice
Example use cases
During a medical conference, a surgeon might use this quote to emphasize the importance of meticulous planning in surgical procedures.
More from Joseph Murray
All quotes →The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?
Joseph MurrayRead
Similar quotes
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Albert EinsteinRead
The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead
Thinking cannot be clear until it has had expression-we must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flowers. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development-thought is the blossom; language is the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.
Ray BradburyRead
Diabetes taught me discipline.
Sonia SotomayorRead
We should allow others' excellences, to preserve a modest opinion of our own.
Isaac BarrowRead